For CNN, Fame Trumps News on Sunday Nights

An image from "Crimes of the Century." The film director Ridley Scott is an executive producer of this new show on CNN.Credit
CNN

CNN unveils its Sunday-night makeover this weekend, and if the goal was to look a little bit more like every other cable channel, then mission accomplished.

The process began in April with the premiere of “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” essentially a continuation of Mr. Bourdain’s excellent Travel Channel series “No Reservations.” On Sunday two new shows arrive to fill out the prime-time lineup: “Crimes of the Century,” a nonfiction noir that would be at home on Investigation Discovery or A&E, and “Inside Man,” a lightweight documentary series that could fit on Sundance or HBO.

The cable mantra these days is something for everyone, as channels that once specialized in history, science, animals or the arts decide that they need a drama, a reality survival competition and maybe a fishing show, preferably set in a Southern swamp. CNN hasn’t added fiction or reality — yet — but it’s trying to be more than a 24-hour purveyor of news and punditry.

Perhaps realizing that its changes aren’t as attention-grabbing as a Bible mini-series or a new installment of “Real Housewives,” CNN is banking on name recognition. Mr. Bourdain was a proven quantity, and the new shows have some star power as well. “Crimes of the Century” lists the film director Ridley Scott as an executive producer, and “Inside Man” is the latest project from the itinerant documentarian Morgan Spurlock.

In the case of “Crimes of the Century,” the association with Mr. Scott doesn’t look to be more than skin deep — the opening episode, a chronological recounting of the Washington Beltway sniper attacks, could have been produced by anyone with sufficient experience in cutting together news clips and talking-head interviews. (It’s not clear which century the title of the show is referring to — the sniper killings took place in 2002, but an opening montage refers to such 20th-century crimes as the shootings of John Lennon and Ronald Reagan and the Oklahoma City bombing.)

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The documentarian Morgan Spurlock as seen in his new hourlong series, "Inside Man."Credit
CNN

It’s competently done, and zips right along — the sniper case, which played out over 22 days in Maryland and Virginia, is a lot to cover in an hour. The presentation is less lurid than it would be in other places, including the broadcast networks, but it’s not noticeably more investigative or news-driven. If there’s anything unusual, it’s the time and weight given to the testimony of a panoply of law-enforcement officials versus that of a handful of reporters and eyewitnesses.

“Inside Man” is also smooth, inoffensive and more of the same — in this case, the same sort of thing Mr. Spurlock has done in earlier series like “30 Days” for FX and “A Day in the Life” for Hulu. The premise is that Mr. Spurlock, who is always the star of his shows, embeds himself in a new culture each week, beginning with the medical marijuana industry on Sunday.

In the course of the hour he enacts various roles — patient, deliveryman and salesman, at which he’s a natural — while his narration and a few simple graphics make a case for medical marijuana and criticize federal attempts to prosecute growers and sellers.

It’s a facile version of muckraking, in which those who agree with Mr. Spurlock are given a platform and the camera is used to make them look sympathetic. A marijuana provider facing federal felony charges is shown blowing bubbles with his daughter while his wife tearfully decries the “gross miscarriage of justice” in his case.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with “Crime of the Century” or “Inside Man” but, at this point, nothing particularly interesting about them either. It’s noticeable that “Crimes of the Century” opens with a decade-old case that’s been well documented (seek out Barbara Kopple’s film “The D.C. Sniper’s Wife,” shown on TruTV in 2008) and “Inside Man” focuses on a business, the Harborside Health Center in Oakland, Calif., that was the subject of an entire series on Discovery in 2011.

If you want to prove you’re not just a news channel, there’s probably a better way to do it than by peddling old news.

A version of this article appears in print on June 22, 2013, on page C2 of the New York edition with the headline: For CNN, Fame Trumps News on Sunday Nights. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe